


The Caretaker Gambit

by saltslimes



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Drug Abuse, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attacks, Suicidal Thoughts, child nines and child connor, gavin Reed is a Libra, hi im here and i have the, lets see if someone can sucessfully force me to finish this, other parent trap au, uhhhhh
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2019-09-26 23:58:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17151452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltslimes/pseuds/saltslimes
Summary: Connor and Nines, two child replacement androids who don't particularly understand their role in their caretaker/owner's lives, meet and make, arguably, the worst possible decision.





	1. Medicinal Value

**Author's Note:**

  * For [woahmako (courfeyracyoutakethewatch)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/courfeyracyoutakethewatch/gifts).



> for my darling friend. yes, i know its incomplete, uhhh and unebeta'd fuckingngngg, sorry merry criustmas

It was snowing. Snow was particularly bad. Everything was bad, basically, he could be brushing his teeth or taking a shit or clocking in and it would hit him like a mack truck but  _ snow _ was fucking bad waiting to happen.

The thing didn’t say anything about it. Hank went into his room and found him parked staring at a wall, charging or maybe plotting Hank’s timely demise.

“Hey, we’re going out,” he said. He didn’t know what he was thinking. He was operating on some other set of protocols, where his actions were arcane and indecipherable even to him. The thing turned around, LED cycling to blue from yellow.

“Out where?” he asked, in a beautiful facsimile of a child’s voice. Hank had been thinking about throwing a beer bottle at his head. Sort of just to see what would happen. So he’d switched to cans. Fowler had folded his arms, utterly unrepentant.

“I have a dog. What more do you want? I’m fucking stable.”

“Not according to your ex. Or the department psych. Take the bot, which is  _ free _ , I might add, or take the therapy.”

Child replacement. Didn’t work the first time either. When Mary was sobbing in the paper-thin hospital gown and whatever was left of their offspring was being made pretty enough to look at. The doctor rattled off a lot of statistics. The doctor said try again.

Mary fucked him hard crying and she spit the words back in his face like he had said them.

_ “Try again. Try again.” _ but then they got Cole, and they couldn’t say anything. The doctor wasn’t right, he just… wasn’t entirely wrong. Cole didn’t fill in the hurt he just took over their world so it was impossible to feel. He was, frankly, relieved when the child-replacement helped him as much as a roomba.

_ “You’re not really trying, are you?”  _ Mary would say, if she saw him drinking himself to blackout while the thing mimed watching TV. He wouldn’t even give it a name. It had that big “900” printed on the front of its sweater. So he called it nines. The only blessing was that it didn’t really look anything like Cole. And it certainly didn’t act like him.

The thing put its own boots on with ease and followed Hank obediently to the car. He could chuck it off a cliff and it wouldn’t say anything.

“Where are we going?” Nines asked while they were pulling out of the driveway.

“The park. So you can play.” Go through the motions, Fowler said. Go through the motions, the department psych said. Smile so your brain think you’re happy. Okay. Okay. He’d play along. He liked to see the movie right through to the end. Why break the cyanide capsule before you know you’ve been made?

There were no human children at the park, and certainly none on the playground. Nines stood idle in his sweater and shorts, watching Hank dubiously. Hank took a seat on the bench and cracked a beer. One of several he’d brought, plus the mickey in his pocket. The plan was to get blackout and then see how things went from there. With any luck, he’d freeze to death and some waste management android would get to peel him off the bench the next morning.

“Go play,” he told the android. Nines dipped his head, turned on his heel and climbed the play-structure. Hank watched him slide down with no sign of enjoyment or even interest. He re-focused his attention on drinking.

[xXx]

Connor came to a dead stop and glanced back at his caretaker. Amanda was on the phone with someone, when she saw him looking she waved a hand.

Never mind that. He already had directions. Play on the playground. It was snowing, icy, unsafe conditions for a human child. He wondered if he should mention it. No, probably not. Play on the playground. There were a few actions he could perform. The slide seemed the most apt. He started to climb the structure and then stopped. There was a child sitting at the top. At the mouth of the slide, waiting to slide down. He was in nothing but a thin sweater and shorts. Connor was only in a jacket and khakis, but he wasn’t human.

“H-are you alright?” he asked. The child looked around. Oh. Connor saw the LED first and sagged with relief. But the child across from him had identical features to him.

“We’re the same model!” Connor said.

“Hardly. Your make preceded mine,” the other android said. Connor considered asking how he knew that, but he didn’t. His caretaker wanted him initialized with a lot of self-knowledge, he supposed. Conner sat down on his knees, making closer inspections and taking light scans of the other android. He was more advanced, grubbier, had dog hair on his clothes, and brown eyes where Connor’s were ice blue.

“Where’s your caretaker?” Connor asked.

“My owner? He’s passing out on the bench.”

“Oh. Should you alert someone?”

“No. He’s exactly where he wants to be.”

“Oh.” Connor considered the play structure, and his new playmate. Neither of them said anything for a moment. 132 seconds to be exact.

“I’m Connor,” Connor said, extending a hand. The other android regarded it like he was offering him roadkill. “Are you going to slide?” Connor asked.

“No. He’s stopped paying attention.”

Connor looked to Amanda. She was still on the phone, but she seemed more distraught. On the edge of tears maybe. But the last five times he attempted to approach her while upset resulted in an escalation of the situation, four resulting in tears and one in items being thrown. So he looked back to his counterpart.

“Can I go then?”

“For what purpose?”

“Following orders,” Connor said easily. His counterpart quirked an eyebrow. 

“Correct,” he said, moving aside. At the bottom, Connor caught a look at his counterpart’s caretaker. He was drinking on the bench. His cheeks above his beard were burned from cold. At risk of frostbite. Connor climbed back up to meet his counterpart again.

“Your caretaker is in need of attention.”

“He’s fine.”

“But I think--”

“Your owner is crying.”

Connor looked. She was. She’d hung the phone up and turned to face the other way, but he could tell by the shake of her shoulders.

“She’s never happy.”

“You don’t help, do you?”

“I don’t know. I’m trying.” Connor looked at his hands. His counterpart laughed. It was a hollow sound. Most androids had a less canned-laugh. Connor probably sounded even worse, he reflected, being a prototype. He scanned his counterpart again.

“Our eyes are compatible,” he said. The other blinked at him.

“Most of us is compatible.” He tilted his head to the side a little, clearly scanning Connor back. “Why would you want to?” he asked, reaching the conclusion and skipping over it.

“Maybe I could do better with your… owner.” Connor waited. His thirium pump was going a little faster than usual, but a quick diagnostic didn’t return any reason why.

“Hmm.” The other android straightened his back. “He calls me Nines. When he calls me anything.”

“He never gave you a name?”

“You’re the one asking to take him on.”

“I just--” Connor glanced back at Amanda. “I want to be useful.” He just wanted another shot. Nines considered her for a moment.

“What’s she do?”

“Works for Cyberlife.”

“Huh. Okay.”

“You’ll do it?”

“Sure. Sounds like a good way to get decommissioned or upgraded. Either way I won’t have to deal with that old drunk anymore.”

Connor dug a finger into his socket.

“Wait, idiot. We each do left, trade, and then right. Got it?”

“Got it,” Connor said. The click when the eyeball disconnected made him recall the smell of  metal and the haze of the void between blinking in the ones and zeroes and having a body. They exchanged eyes in under five minutes. Connor blinked through new lenses.

“Your eyes are outdated,” Nines said.

“Sorry,” Connor said. Nines ignored him.

“We have to trade clothes.” For this part they crawled into the relative shelter of the covered slide at the other end of the playground. It didn’t really matter. Neither of their caretakers was paying any attention.

“Okay. Good luck,” Connor said, offering his hand to Nines. Nines gave him the roadkill look again.

“To think we were made off the same design,” he said.

[xXx]

Hank jerked awake to small hands tugging at his coat.

“Hank. Hank. It’s past two in the morning.”

“Hmzwhat? So?” the thing blinked at him like it didn’t understand.

“You need to get indoors before your body temperature drops any further. Alcohol will exacerbate this.”

“Man, they didn’t even try when they built you, huh?” he said. The thing’s LED cycled yellow-red-yellow. It tugged on Hank’s coat again.

“Okay, fine, fine. Where’d I park?”

“You are too intoxicated to drive. I can call you a cab.”

He was too exhausted to argue with it. And his head was pounding. As they reached the corner the thing reached up to take his hand, tugging him forward. But it didn’t let go. Just stood there holding on until Hank yanked his hand free. In the cab the thing folded its hands in its lap and stared out the window at the falling snow.

“It does look nice, doesn’t it Hank?” it asked softly. Hank buried his face in his hands and said nothing.


	2. Down-cycled Carbon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Connor helps Hank out of a jam. Sort of. Slightly.

Sumo hopped down from the couch as soon as they were over the threshold and barked loudly. He let out a low growl, whereas the android let out a high-pitched but unintelligible sound. Hank jumped in the doorway and the android bounded past him only to pull to a sudden halt in front of Sumo.

“Hi. I’m your friend, don’t you know? We’re friends,” he said, and then he reached out an (almost trembling?) hand towards Sumo, who growled slightly.

“Calm down, Sumo. It’s the same toaster as always,” Hank grumbled. He shut the door and bypassed the weird reunion happening in the living room to grab another beer. Since when was the robot so fake-excited all the time? Normally he was just obedient and sullen. In a minute though he came in to greet Hank and showed off his usual wonky-as-hell smile. Obviously the department wasn’t going to spring for a state-of-the-art model but Nines was sort of genuinely bad. If Hank  _ had _ paid for him he’d want his money back. 

“What baby roomba? You need something?” he asked. He set the beer down harder than he’d intended. Foam bubbled over onto the grimy formica. Something in the smile quirked--like it broke a little into some other expression. Maybe the thing was falling apart already--although it was barely a month old so Hank would be shocked.

“No Hank, I was just wondering if Sumo needs to be walked again tonight.” The android rocked forward on the balls of his feet and then back to his heels. He had his hands clasped behind his back; totally the picture of a child trying to get away with something. Cole didn’t do that, he always picked his left ear when he was lying. Even when he was old enough to know Hank could spot the tell, he’d see his fingers twitch up.

The android cleared his throat (not like a child at all, and also who thought to program that in?).

“Since I’m not actually a human child I could walk him for you, if you would prefer not to go out.”

Fuck that. That was the opposite of therapy. Taking away the slivers of his day when he got to hang out with just his dog and pretend his life resembled something normal or good. And all of a sudden the “kid” was just dropping the act whenever he pleased?

Go through the fucking motions.

“Nah. You’d better go to bed. I’ll walk Sumo and be back in fifteen, and you’d better be asleep.”

The thing opened its mouth like it was about to say something pedantic about robots, and then abruptly closed it again. Huh. He didn’t know those things… changed their minds, or whatever.

When he did get back, maybe twenty minutes later, he went into the study where the charging port was and didn’t find the thing. Heart hammering in his ears and saliva thick he went down the hall to check his bedroom. Empty. 

He passed the open bathroom door to wrench open the linen closet out of idle confusion and the thing, curled on the bottom shelf like a folding toy, blinked at him.

“Hoo. Okay! What the fuck are you doing in there?”

“You said sleep, I didn’t know where you’d want me to… perform that action.” 

“In the study. With your charging port. Like normal.”

“Right. Good night Hank,” the thing said, unfolding itself uncannily and trotting down the hall. Hank stared into the empty space that it had vacated for a moment. He couldn’t shake this sick feeling like there was a room missing, like he should open another door and find Cole’s old bedroom. But they sold that house, obviously. Someone else’s kid or dog or whoever was sleeping in there. It was a household gym for all Hank knew. 

Either way, the clouds on the wall had been painted over, because he did that himself before they showed the place. When the divorce was in its infant stages. When Hank was skin hurt, raw, before the bone hurt could settle in.

[xXx]

Hank woke up to not his alarm, or the hangover, but to his phone. Which should not be fucking ringing. It was his day off. That was why he decided to get stupidly drunk in the park and wallow in it. But sure enough Fowler was on the ID. His cell number, Hank mused for a moment before remembering last week he’d blocked the DPD office number.

“Hank, I need you in here and if you can save the tirade for your cab ride that’d be great.”

“Someone better be so murdered, in a way we could never have dreamed of.”

“Worse, it has to do with you not filling out and filing reports properly, and if you don’t come in and fix this screw-up it’s costing the department a hilarious amount of money.”

“I would genuinely rather die and I hope I do.”

“If you repeat that for me real quick I can have you benched and in therapy before you can get up and take your morning shit.”

“I’m coming in.” He growled that into the phone and hung up before he growled the rest of it, which involved “Die, Fowler,” and a sort of tirade about how much he wanted to be mowed down by a passing cab.

Of course the robot was waiting for him in the hallway.

“Hank, would you like me to make coffee?”

“Do elementary schoolers normally make coffee?” As a testament to the “genius” engineering behind this model, he seemed to have to think about it.

“No.”

“Okay, so no, right?” He did up a few more buttons on his shirt and scrubbed a hand through--wow--quite greasy hair. Not like he was trying to impress anyone though. “I gotta go in to the office, don’t leave the house and especially not with Sumo.” He didn’t know where the android was getting all these fun new ideas but it felt suddenly less safe to leave him alone and unsupervised. 

He thought about making his own coffee, and then about throwing up in the sink, and settled for chugging half a glass of old water he’d left on the table the night before. The android watched all this silently from the doorway, looking nonplussed.

“So then--”

“Jesus!” The thing was right by his leg, toying with its own small fingers, staring up moon-faced.

“Sorry to startle you. So then, what should I do today? While you are gone?”

“Just…” Hank sucked his teeth. For some reason, he was unable to rid his mind of images of the thing lighting his house on fire, and that was just what he fucking needed. So it was glitched out or on weird new updates or something. Maybe if he brought it in Fowler would think he was taking things seriously and ease up a bit.

Stop threatening therapy every minute. Hank spat in the sink and cleared his throat.

“Okay, you’re coming in with me.”

“To your work?” the thing’s face lit up with a smile somewhere between genuine and the caverns of the uncanny valley. Hank made a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat and went to put his shoes on.

“It was nice going to the park yesterday. Maybe we could take Sumo to the park.” The thing looked out over the sunlit street like it was surveying a whole new area.

“Uh. Maybe.” Hank couldn’t find the energy for any better response. The thing kept it up when they got to the station, that wide-eyed wonderment at everything. He waved to the android receptionist, he waved to the human detectives. He stood at Hank’s side while he booted his PC and grumbled to himself.

Reed didn’t seem to be around, which was some small mercy. The last thing he needed was that asshole ribbing him about the child replacement bot. Sure, Gavin wasn’t going to take it… that far but… he’d take it as far as he could.

Hank was working for maybe half an hour before Fowler came over.

“Hank. Let’s go grab some coffee, I want to chat.”

When Fowler wanted to do the kind of chat that happened outside his office it either meant he was just sick of their shit coffee machine or he had something pretty serious on his mind. Sometimes both.

“Oh, hello there,” he said, to the android. It gave him that shitty weird smile and extended a hand as if they were about to exchange business cards.

Fowler stifled a laugh and shook the thing’s hand.

Either he’d just been after better coffee or he’d veered onto a different course because at the cart outside Fowler took a breath of fresh-ish air and smiled.

“I’m glad you’re getting into it Hank. You’re honestly one of my best, I couldn’t let you pickle yourself in your home.”

Nice sentiment. Didn’t really make him want to die less. The thing scuffed its boots on the ground and tapped its fingers to its thumb. Fowler followed Hank’s gaze and turned his attention to it.

“You’ve never brought him in before. What’s the little guy’s name?”

Oh, well, Fuck. Hank had the three seconds of finishing the sip of coffee he was taking, and his brain was utterly blank. Nines was on the tip of his tongue but he couldn’t say Nines, and he felt like if he opened his mouth Cole was gonna spill out and then he’d have to… then he didn’t know what would happen.

“I’m Connor,” the thing said brightly. Hank swallowed his coffee and choked slightly.

“Yup. Connor,” he wheezed.

“Well hey, good to meet you Connor,” Fowler said.

“We went to the park yesterday, I played on the slide,” the thing added.

Hank waited until they were back in the office to say anything. Until Fowler was in another meeting with the door shut.

“Why’d you lie? I never gave you a name.”

“Your boss seems invested in this.”

“Yeah, he is, but you didn’t have to save my ass.”

“I’m supposed to help you Hank. That’s what I’m here for.”

The name stuck like gum on the sidewalk. By the time Hank was clocking out and heading home, he’d stopped thinking of it as “the thing” because it was so easy to just think of him as Connor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i dont have a beta for dbh fics so uhhhhhhhhh sorry


	3. Packaged for Individual Sale

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Connor gets into a jam this time. Nines observes his new boss with smug apprehension.

Nines crossed the empty expanse of the cyberlife lobby. It took a long time in such a small body. The receptionist at the desk was another android. She scanned his visitors badge and sent him up in the elevator. Amanda’s office was stark and clean. The walls were bare.

“Oh. I forgot you’d be coming up here. I’m packing. Or… making attempts at packing.”

Amanda had not struck Nines as the type of person who made attempts at anything. She seemed like she just did things. That was what made him listen to his relatively inferior counterpart about switching places. Watching Hank rot to death was interminable. Amanda was going to do something. If that something was decommission him, well, so be it.

“We’re going to go out shopping later. Won’t that be fun.”

It sounded a lot like rotting to Nines, but he wasn’t going to express any opinion. Besides, she hadn’t phrased it as a question.

“You carry one of these,” she said, handing him a small potted plant. She took a white box that seemed to contain mostly drives and a few paper files. They rode the elevator down together. Nines could see the showroom through the glass. Row on row on row. Amanda got a call while they were getting into the car. She declined it.

Nines held the plant on his lap so no parts of it would break off during the ride. When Amanda looked his way her face was entirely void of expression.

[xXx]

The dog was probably the best part. Amanda liked plants a lot and didn’t seem to care much for animals. There were fish in the pond, and Connor had liked watching them swim but that wasn’t much. Sumo liked to be pet and scratched behind the ears, he liked to bowl Connor over onto the carpet even if Hank told him not to.

Three days and Hank hadn’t noticed. He wished he had some way to contact his counterpart. He felt a little guilty letting him go with Amanda. But he’d seemed more than eager to leave Hank behind.

That made some sense. Hank was short tempered, self-destructive, messy and gave generally unclear instructions. He kept a few pictures of a small child up out of reach. A young boy. Presumably the child Connor was replacing.

Connor didn’t look much like him, although the model he’d swapped places with had brown eyes. Better eyes than the ones he’d been initialized with, which he also felt guilty about. Then again, it was possible his counterpart would be able to talk Amanda into an upgrade, if she hadn’t already decommissioned him.

Decommissioning always seemed right around the corner with Amanda. With Hank the danger seemed more nebulous--it could come from anywhere, be anything. He’d stood by the ornamental pond and watched Amanda clipping roses from the vine, full blooms hitting the gravel below. 

“He doesn’t even know the difference, we could have just walked him around the block,” Hank grumbled. He was leaning on the button for the light. Connor decided not to tell him that the button only activated the signal sound and didn’t do anything to prompt a light change.

“He liked it, he had fun!” he said. Hank grumbled something unintelligible, even when Connor ran it back twice over. Sumo tugged at the leash. Connor buried a hand in his coarse fur. The light changed.

Hank started to cross. Connor saw a piece of paper come loose from his pocket and ducked back, crouching to grab it.

He did observe the cyclist, but it was too late to do anything. Systems just braced his spine to prevent damage. His skull hit the ground with a thud he picked up both internally and externally. Soft CPU hit the inside of its enclosure. The world shorted out for a second.

When he opened his eyes again Hank was crouched over him, but not looking at him. He was yelling something.

“Oh it’s--well, sorry.” Connor heard distantly. His ears were whining with random feedback. He heard Hank swear and blinked again. They were on the other side of the street. Sumo was licking his hand.

“--okay?” Sound cut in at the end of the sentence but Connor used context clues to piece it together.

“I’m fine, systems are operating as normal,” he said. Hank’s hand left his shoulder, and he observed its absence with every system possible. 

[xXx]

Hank went into the office, pulled his desk drawer open, took the picture out, put it back immediately, closed the drawer. His hands were shaking. And he needed… he needed a drink or possibly a surgery to remove his brain from his body. He needed a thick handful of sedatives, the good ones, the ones the uniforms occasionally lift out of the bathroom cupboards of dead old folks, the ones the uniforms occasionally sell to a guy who knows how to ask.

He sat in his rarely-used desk chair for a while, looking over printed tax documents and old magazines. Somewhere in that filing cabinet was Cole’s birth certificate. When you’re packing up your life, and dividing it out there are these odd questions of what to take, and how much to take, and what should be let go.

He didn’t remember how the conversation went down. He was probably drunk. They both might have been.

Hank got up, shaking off thoughts of blood on ruined car seats. The kid--no, the  _ thing _ \--was just that. Not a kid at all.

He went into the living room, dropped down onto the couch and flipped around until he found a game. Last night’s, and he already knew the final score, but it was something to do. Sumo whined in the kitchen.

“I already fed ya, you mutt!”

A few minutes of peace. The suspense of a tie game isn’t the same when you know the ending. Then Sumo was whining again. He came trotting out and nudged Hank’s hand.

“What?” But Sumo was speaking pretty clear dog of “follow me” so he heaved himself off the couch.

Connor--the android was in the kitchen facing the cabinets, hands limp at his sides. Sumo went over and nudged him, the robot turned and smiled his wonky smile again.

“Oh! Oh. Who are you? Rover, maybe?” Connor patted Sumo’s head. Then he looked up and saw Hank, seemingly for the first time.

“Hank. Something is not functioning optimally. I think I may have sustained damage to a major system.”

“Okay? What kind of damage? Can you fix it yourself?”

“Memory is not operating properly. I’ll run a scan and begin self-repair protocols,” he said. He sat down on the floor and shut his eyes. Hank sat down, watching him a little warily. He waited, but nothing happened. The thing was rebooting, or whatever. He was about to get up for a beer when Connor’s eyes snapped open.

“Oh, Hank.” He paused.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“Did it work?”

“Did what work?”

“Your scan for self-repair or whatever.”

“I’m sorry, something is not functioning optimally. I think I may have sustained damage to a major system.”

“I know. You just told me that.” Hank gripped the edge of the table. Connor just stared up at him with empty brown eyes.

“I--” Connor paused. His eyes flicked back and forth like he was thinking. “Memory is not operating properly. I’ll run a scan and begin self-repair protocols.”

“Well it didn’t work last time--” Hank started. But Connor’s eyes snapped shut. “Fuck.” Sumo whined and left the room. Hank got a beer out of the fridge and chucked the cap in the direction of the counter. After a minute or so, Connor’s eyes opened, and he told Hank that something was not functioning optimally. He got his phone from the living room and called cyberlife.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoopso i didnt update for ages
> 
> things are getting denser than i originally intended, which could be a good thing or a bad thing. nevermatter. there's more to come.


	4. Pretty Cruel, the Goldfish Rule

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Connor has an awful time. Elijah lets the cat free of the bag.

“Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line.” There was something deeply ironic about cyberlife having an automated call system, but Hank was nursing the edges of a headache and Connor was sitting on the floor with his back against the cupboards. Sumo had been rersting his head on his lap, but now he’d moved off, snuffling around his bowl.

“Hank.” This time he didn’t look up. He was half-immersed in the crossword in front of him. The dregs of his coffee smelled stale and nauseating and yet appetizing at the same time. Connor babbled on regardless, like a roomba hitting the wall over and over again.

“Something is not functioning optimally. I may have sustained damage to a major system.”

Something in Hank was coiled with anger, twisting in his chest. It was like he’d lost a little feeling in his fingers. When Cole was dead (but before they knew) he stood in the hallway and he could hear his heart thudding in his chest. And to be robbed of something but not know it yet--to find out that you’d already lost, before you even saw the doors open. He always resented the space of time between Cole’s death and his knowing. What was it? Wasted hope. What was the lesson to take away?

He’d turn it over and over in his mind, and nothing bubbled to the surface. It could not be resolved. He solved 16 down and didn’t glanced over as Connor started speaking again. He resented him. He felt tricked, like for a moment his vision had gone fuzzy and he’d seen a real child in place of the simulation.

Sumo wandered back over to Connor and licked his hand.

“Hey boy,” Connor said softly. Hank got up to refill his mug. “Hank,” he said. His voice was even smaller than usual, but it was also warped at the edges, mechanically slurred. Hank poured the coffee and held back a sigh. “Something is not functioning optimally.”

“Oh, yeah?” Hank stirred sugar into his coffee.

“I may have sustained damage to a major system.”

“You don’t say.” The anger was ebbing out. He felt old, standing in the kitchen in his sweatpants, doing a crossword and waiting on hold. It was painfully mundane. It was going through the motions.

After his second coffee Connor was starting to grate on him. They should have made those things with an off switch, he’d said before and thought more times than he could count. He retreated into the bathroom to piss and then glare at his reflection over the sink. He looked like shit. There was no other word for it.

Mary used to leave chapstick kisses on the mirror, and they were a bitch to scrub off but he never complained. She stopped when Cole was born, because they were busy. Sometimes a smudge of toothpaste caught his eye and he’d be back in the bathroom with his electric razor in hand, and cinnamon toothpaste in his mouth--Mary couldn’t stand mint, and he couldn’t be bothered to keep seperate toothpaste, he just got in the habit of picking up cinnamon Crest if he was out.

There was a dull thud from down the hall--like Sumo bumping into something or jumping on something he wasn’t supposed to. Hank shut the taps off. The linoleum was cold under his bare feet, almost grounding.

But as he was stepping out of the bathroom there was another thud, and then another, and then Sumo barked, and he found himself walking faster. There was a dent in the cupboards. Connor moved back slowly but he rammed his head against the dent with inhuman speed.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he said. Rather than respond, Connor reeled back and smacked his head again. It echoed off the title backsplash. Sumo barked more urgently. The wood crunched where Connor’s forehead struck it. Hank crossed the room without a plan and yanked Connor back without a plan and the thing--the kid--looked up at him with the empty-eyed terror of a trapped animal, and just screamed.

It was ear-splitting like the alarm in a halted elevator, and it lasted what felt like an hour, but had to have been only a minute. Sumo feld the room. Hank sat down on the floor holding the kid’s head between his hands, touching his shoulders, unsure how to act, and then the scream cut off abruptly, and Connor was just staring. His tiny frame was shaking, and absently Hank thought: I didn’t know they could do that. Is that a bug or a feature?

Connor blinked three times.

“What time is it actually?” he said.

“What?”

“What time is it right now, in your house, and you are Hank.”

“It’s like two pm.”

“So it’s been, oh,” he said, and then his face crumpled. He didn’t cry. Maybe he wasn’t set up to cry. He just curled in on himself and covered his face with his hands. He was making a low whine, as if he’d tempered the scream to a more bearable octave. Hank dragged him in closer, put his arms all the way around the little body. He rubbed Connor’s back. Like it would maybe do anything.

“Shhh. You’re okay. Everything’s okay,” he said. Still on the kitchen table, still on speaker, his call finally picked up. A voice that could have been human or android, but either way was more sentient than the bot, asked him what the nature of his problem was.

[xXx]

The snow was hard on top, it crunched where Nines walked.

“Come on Connor,” Amanda called. They sky was empty and clear, a huge void of bright white. Nines followed Amanda up the steps. Harsh architecture, meant to evoke alienation. Much like cyberlife, but this was clearly a private dwelling. Not so commercial.

Elijah Kamski didn’t greet them at the door. Instead a Chole model narrowed her eyes at Nines and then smiled at Amanda.

“Elijah is in the study, if you’ll follow me through,” she said. Nines trailed after Amanda, tracking salt and slush across pristine floors. Elijah was in a robe and pajama pants in his study. The desk was littered with screens, some on and some off. It felt out of place in the rest of the house, the one place where the illusion of natural minimalism broke down.

Nines stood by the door as Amanda walked in.

“Heard you’re done,” he said, without looking up.

“You had the right idea, I suppose,” she said.

“So what are you here for?”

“I couldn’t just stop in to see an old friend?”

“Not likely,” Elijah said. When he looked up he was smiling, but the smile vanished when he laid eyes on Nines. “You didn’t like my gift,” he said. Nines froze. He wanted to skim his orders, but his orders were to make Hank feel better, and Hank was gone, Hank was dead on that park bench for all he knew. What was the last thing Amanda told him to do? Put something down. And he did, and he was empty-handed. Follow, and he’d followed, and he was in the room now, and Elijah stood up from the desk.

“What makes you say that?” Amanda glanced back at Nines. That other android’s eyes twinged in his sockets, as if warning oncoming rejection.

“You traded it in for some other model. Newer.”

“I--what?” Amanda was looking now, scanning him as if she had the vision of an android, as if his make and model number might become clear to her. And Elijah was standing.

“Come over here,” he said, clearly directed at Nines. He looked to Amanda. She nodded. He crossed to Elijah, who crouched down in front of him. The first thing he did was look at his eyes.

“Turn your skin off,” he said. Nines obeyed. Elijah laughed, a light sound under his breath. He had Nines look up at the ceiling, then down at the floor--he was looking at the other eyes.


	5. Deleterious Alleles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Put your son in a bag of rice all you want.

“Elijah,” Amanda said, without patience. Elijah sat back on his haunches.

“You can turn it back on,” he said. Nines willfully became human-looking again. “So what happened?” the question was directed at Nines, not Amanda, but he looked to her. Her face was void of any recognizable expression.

“Those aren’t your eyes. Not the ones you were initialized with. They belonged to the model I gave Amanda, if I had to guess.”

“We met in the park. I was supposed to make a man happy, but he only wanted to die. He didn’t want a replacement for his son. That other model was… deviant I think. But I decided I’d rather be deactivated than wait for the detective to finish killing himself.”

Elijah’s eyes were bright. He looked up at Amanda, whose lips were pursed.

“And do you have a name?” she asked.

“I think of myself as Nines. YK-900 officially.”

“Nines,” Elijah said. He stood up in a fluid motion and went over to the desk, tapped something in at one of the many screens. “Chloe, check his story.”

The Chloe model crossed the room to put her skinless fingers against his temple. He let her tug the data free without any resistance.

[#]

The waiting room was empty, mostly silent but for soft muzak playing from somewhere. The receptionist at the desk wasn’t human. Hank wiped his hands on his jeans three times. He flipped through an entire magazine without taking in any information from it. There were no windows in a room this deep in a building, but there were sunlight panels on the far wall, and they shifted color to indicate the day sinking towards evening. 

“Mr. Anderson?” the receptionist finally called. Hank stood up too fast, so his chair banged against the wall. He wanted to deck Fowler. He wanted to go into his yard and take a baseball bat to his toaster, just to see plastic and wires break open on the ground. He felt like he’d been duped somehow, like he’d been tricked into believing a fantasy.

He felt thirty years older than he was, and he felt at the same time like nothing had changed, like he’d been halted as the man he was in the hospital hallway, and he’d been robbed of the ability to mature any further.

The receptionist retrieved Connor, as if he were a package Hank had ordered. He looked more like his usual self.

“The repair is covered by your employer’s insurance,” the receptionist told him. And we calibrated his ocular units, they were installed incorrectly.” Well, he was department-paid for, so that tracked. Hank nodded.

Connor was silent in the cab. He kept his gaze fixed on his hands, which were folded in his lap. Cyberlife had replaced his shirt for some reason, with a fresh new one that had their name and logo emblazoned on it. He looked like a very weak approximation of a child.

“Well this has been a shit day,” Hank said. Connor looked up sharply.

“I’m sorry. I don’t remember how I sustained damage, but it must have been inconvenient.”

“I mean, not how I’d like to spend my day off. But it wasn’t your fault.” Hank settled back into the seat. Connor glanced out the window and then raised a hand to his mouth, as if to bite a nail or chew on a finger. He blinked and set his hands in his lap.

“You don’t remember how you got damaged?”

“I don’t--no, some of my memories were corrupted and deleted.” Silence for a moment. “Did I scare Sumo?”

“Sumo can handle whatever,” Hank said. He watched Connor lace his hands in his lap and then pull them apart and drop them to his sides. Neither of them said anything for the rest of the ride. Sumo was happy when they got in, he nearly bowled Connor over. But Connor was much more like his old self, he was sullen, he waited until Hank told him to go charge, and then he went without a word.

He could have left it at that. If he hadn’t let the thing give itself a name, and make him feel something for a few horrible moments, he would have. Instead, he came into the study after the TV seemed to degrade into static and noise.

Connor was sitting facing the wall, and he had the plug in his hands and his charging port open, but he was just staring into space. Hank sat down beside him on the knubbly grey carpet, ignoring the protest of his knees.

“Something you’re thinking about?” he asked.

“That should not have happened. I should not have let it and I should not have reacted in… in the way I did.”

“Okay.” Fuck. Fuck. This was familiar ground, suddenly, this was horrifically known to Hank, but he felt like he was navigating blindfolded and turn around backwards. He wanted to flee the room. Instead he put a hand on Connor’s shoulder, and he found him to be trembling of all things.

“Were you scared?” he asked. Connor looked up at him in scandalized shock.

“I wasn’t--I wasn’t operating as intended.”

“Aren’t the kid models supposed to cry and get upset?”

“Not  _ this  _ model. This model is happy and diligent and calm. This model doesn’t get… scared.”

“Huh.” Hank didn’t know what to do with that. He pulled Connor in to his side and just held him there. A small hand found the front of his ratty t-shirt and hung on. And Hank felt both at once completely out of his depth and completely at home. Like some part of him knew exactly what to do, while some other, wounded, aging part of him had just shut down.

[#]

Nines had to hurry to keep up with Amanda. She was walking more quickly than she usually did, and he had some instinct to reach out and grab the hem of her skirt, which would definitely be the wrong course of action. Something the deviant version from the park would probably do. She stopped and looked back at him when he truly fell behind, and he hurried to catch up to her.

“Do you know where we’re going?” she asked. She was resting on hand on her hip. Her dress was rose-pink, and made the colors in her face richer, and the color of her lipstick seem bolder. Nine avoided stumbling over a loose stone.

“Deactivation?” he’d assumed that when they set out from Kamski’s place, but this was a garden, not unlike the park, and equally barren and cold due to the season.

“He and I don’t agree on much anymore,” she said. Nines assumed she meant Kamski. “But you are interesting, that’s for sure.”

That wasn’t a question, so Nines said nothing. He was pretty sure interesting was one of the functions he was designed for, in a roundabout sort of way. It was encapsulated in other functions.

“So you’re following me even though you think I’ll deactivate you?” Amanda asked. She started walking again and Nines followed, this time keeping better pace.

“What else am I supposed to do?”

“Fair point.” Amanda was silent for a moment or two. “What if I gave you a command to preserve yourself, even at the expense of others?”

“My programming would forbid that.”

“What if I altered your programming?”

“Why would you do that?”

“This is a hypothetical question.”

“Is there a specific hypothetical answer you’re looking for?” Nines said. The corner of Amanda’s mouth twitched, as if she almost smiled. They had come to a stop in front of a dead rose bush. Amanda pointed to it and asked what it was. Nines said a dead rose bush. It had no leaves or blooms on it.

“Not dead, but dormant. It will grow again in the spring,” she said. Oh. Nines didn’t know plants did that, but it seemed to make sense. Like machines without battery, except not machines like him, because a total battery loss would result in the destruction of the soft CPU, and the unit would no longer function, and any data not uploaded to the cloud would be destroyed. And he wasn’t tethered to the cloud, because Hank had never initialized his backup system. So if his soft CPU was destroyed he would cease to exist, in every iteration of himself. 

Considering that made him feel weirdly compressed inside his body, as if he suddenly didn’t have enough memory to contain all his thoughts, and as if his soft CPU might be in distress even though it clearly wasn’t.

“Nines?” Amanda said. “That’s what you call yourself?”

“Hank didn’t give me a name. He’s too upset about his dead son.”

“Humans are like that.”

“Did your son also die?” he asked. She looked at him sharply. He wasn’t supposed to ask.

“He was a lot older than you. And he didn’t look any similar. Elijah kept pushing, so I told him he had to… make it as different as possible. I could see his argument but I didn’t want… to be reminded.”

“Did it work?”

“No. I should have just said no outright.”

“So now what?” Nines asked. He felt some of that same compressing sensation. Amanda might really deactivate him. And he would really no longer exist.

“I don’t know. I suppose we’ll go home for a while,” she said. And then she offered him her hand, which was an invitation and a command in one. He took her hand. Her fingers were 37 C. Warm, in contrast to the air around them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heyo! unsure if im gonna be continuing this, but i figured i should at least post what I have rather than let it languish in my gdocs
> 
> have a spectacular summer!

**Author's Note:**

> mwah, kissu!


End file.
